Benin govt sponsoring smuggling into Nigeria — CANMPEL

CHEMICAL and Non metallic Employers Federation of Nigeria has accused the government and people of Benin Republic of deliberately sabotaging the Nigerian economy through state sponsored smuggling.

At Idiriroko border

Making the accusation, yesterday, the President of the federation, Mr. Devakumar Edwin, who is the Managing Director of Dangote Cement said that industries in the country were folding up not because of power and infrastructural challenges but because Benin Republic was sponsoring smuggling of low quality products that are cheaper than locally produced goods into Nigeria.

Edwin said industry membership of his federation that stood at 145 has dwindled to 92 with a total loss of 270, 000 jobs in the last few years, adding that more companies were at the verge of folding up. He urged the fedral government to shut the border to check the menace of state sponsored smuggling into the country.

Edwin declared “We made a detailed study on why this is going on and we realised that Benin Republic is acting as an official sponsor of smuggling.

The Dangote group has been in the business since 1992 and we have seen how the government of Benin encouraged smuggling by keeping a loyal group of smugglers so that they can generate revenue from the group and the group was coming into Cotonou and then crossing the border into Nigeria.

“What we had done before now was to manage the situation as much as we can but today what we have seen is a state sponsored smuggling. What we have realized is that at the top level in the government of Benin Republic, there are people who have significant interest in smuggling.

Interest in smuggling

So, now it’s not just about people trying to take advantage of situations and loopholes, it is state sponsored. So they are ensuring that most of the goods coming into their markets are then smuggled across the border. The comptroller general of Customs has been trying to do his best but he has limited men and resources available.

“We see the Nigerian government trying to help industries and the ministry as well and the CG is trying to curtail the smuggling going on but once it’s a state sponsored, it’s difficult to manage.

Take rice for instance, if you take the data from customs and you see the data of rice shipment from Cotonou, 2.2million tonnes of parboiled rice is shipped into Cotonou and all of us know that nobody in Cotonou uses parboiled rice. Parboiled rice is used in Nigeria.

So why would the government of Benin allow 2.2million tonnes of rice into their market when they know they do not need it? So you can understand that it is being sponsored by top people in the government. So if the state is sponsoring smuggling it will be impossible for customs to control smuggling as much as they are trying today.

“We realised that one of the biggest problems affecting existing operators in this industry is the smuggling of goods across the border to the country. Everybody knows that this is what affected textiles. Something like textile coming from China, India and Pakistan destroyed the textile industry in Nigeria.

Before then, we also had the challenges of power, poor road infrastructure, and high financial risks. I remember in 1992 when we are doing restructuring of the Nigeria industrial needs, I was borrowing as high as 62 per cent, we were surviving and managing very well but when the smuggling started coming in they just destroyed